After nearly 20 years, Alyson Murphy, 60, from South Wales, thought she’d seen the end of cancer...

Lying in the sun, I spread out on my towel face down, keen to soak up some rays. ‘Who wants to rub my back?’ I asked, gesturing hopefully to my daughters.

It was 1999, and Kimberly, then 15, and Katharine, 14, and I were living in South Africa.

My husband Gerard and I had moved there back in 1980 when he got a job in Johannesburg.

I soon found work as an operations manager, we’d had the two girls, and life was grand.

In 1997, when Gerard and I divorced, he moved back to the UK, but I decided to stay behind with the girls.

They’d been born and raised there – it was their home.

But as a single mum with two teenagers to support, I was suddenly rushed off my feet, working all hours just to make ends meet.

Now, two years later, at age 40, I was exhausted.

And lately, I’d been having terrible back pain.

‘It’s just the long hours,’ I told myself.

But a few weeks later, I was suddenly woken up in the middle of the night with a burning pain in my stomach.

It felt as though boiling water was running through me, and I rushed to the loo to be sick.

At my GP the next day, it didn’t take long for him to feel a mass on my stomach.

Then, referred for an emergency ultrasound at a local hospital, I was given devastating news.

‘We’ve found a 15cm tumour in your stomach,’ my consultant said.

Cancer.

‘Is that what I could feel burning inside me?’ I asked the doctor, shocked.

‘I’m afraid that means the cancer might be spreading,’ he replied.

He was right – a scan two days later showed not only that the cancer was malignant, but that it had already spread to one of my kidneys.

It explained the back aches. The only option for me at that point was surgery, which I had a few days later.

Over eight hours, surgeons worked to remove my tumour as well as my kidney.

Thankfully it had all gone to plan, but it got me thinking.

What if the cancer comes back? I thought to myself.

I only had one kidney left – I was already more at risk.

I realised I couldn’t stay in South Africa with my girls – if something

I had two girls to look after